Glory Planet Read online

  GLORY PLANET

  A. BERTRAM .CHANDLER

  THOMAS BOUREGY AND COMPANY, INC. - - EAST 6OTH STREET • NEW YORK 2 2

  ©, Copyright, 1964, by A. Bertram Chandler

  PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY THE RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE COLONIAL PRESS INC., CLINTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Dedication:

  For the dear, dead Venus who

  existed only in the fertile imaginations

  of the science fictioneers.

  CHAPTER ONE

  That previous evening, pulling out from New Orleans, it had been just the normal gray twilight, nothing fancy. In fact, as I remarked to Captain Beynon, it had been quite a while since we had seen any spectacular color effects on the river. He replied, rather huffily, that we were paid to carry cargo and passengers from Point A to Point B, not to admire the scenery, and would I please see to it that the Show Boat was made fast securely alongside. He wasn't his usual pleasant self, that was obvious—and for this the Show Boat was to blame. This Show Boat, too, had the Bishop's own daughter, Adelie Dale, as Saint-in-Charge.

  During the night, when I was off watch, we rounded Latham's Point, and when I came up to the

  9

  pilot house in the early morning we were steering by compass, making up for the First Narrows through Craig's Bay. There was nothing to see; we wouldn't be in sight of land until we made Point Macdonald the following forenoon.

  With the Venusian dawn came the heat—oppressive and steamy. With the dawn the red light spread from the east, slowly at first, staining all the sky with the color of newly shed blood, deepening to a sullen crimson. From our twin stacks, smoke rose vertically, black and greasy, almost solid, spreading out to a dark, ugly smudge on the lurid sky. And it was quiet, too quiet, hushed. I went into the little chartroom abaft the wheelhouse and looked at the barometer. The mercury had fallen rapidly since I had come on watch, seemed to be falling appreciably even as I looked. I whistled for my standby quartermaster, told him to call the Old Man.

  Captain Beynon was soon on the bridge. He had been up most of the night, I knew—and yet his white shorts and shirt were clean and stiffly starched. His graying hair was neatly combed. He seemed, even, to have found time to shave.

  He looked at me and grinned. "Well, Whitley, you're getting your fancy color effects now."

  "Ay. There's a fine dollop of muck brewing up around the Pole. Do you think we'll make the Narrows before it hits, sir?"

  "I hope so, Whitley. I hope so. But judging by the rate the glass is falling we'll catch it. And that blasted Show Boat isn't going to improve our steering any."

  "The Bishop's daughter can pray," I said, "and the Gospel Singers can sing a couple or three hymns."

  44Mr. Whitley! At times I suspect that your spiritual home is in Albany."

  "It might be at that," I said. I knew the Old Man, had sailed with him, off and on, for years, knew that he wasn't the sort to report anybody to the Saints of the Salvation for heresy or apostasy. I knew, too, that he was a friend of Duke John's—or as much a friend of the Duke's as anybody could be who acknowledged the sovereignty of the Bishop and the Saints.

  "I'll hold the bridge," said Captain Beynon. "Slip aboard the Show Boat, find whoever's in charge of the thing, warn 'em to see everything well lashed and ( hocked off before the blow starts."

  "Ay, ay, sir," I said. "The course is Oh One Two, and she's carrying port wheel."

  There was a short brow between the main deck of Richmond Queen and the main deck of the Show Boat. Hard by this gangway was a doorway over which was painted Ark of the Covenant Gospel Singers. The door was open, hooked back. I stuck my head inside and shouted, "Anybody at home?" There was no reply, so I went into the accommodation. It would be useless, I knew, to expect to find anybody in authority on the lower deck of the Show Boat; as soon as I found the companion way to the upper deck cabins I climbed it.

  The Saint-in-Charge was a woman, the Bishop's daughter. She would not be pleased at being awakened—especially by a member of the class of society rather despised by the Saints—the rivermen. But next to the cabin with Saint-in-Charge over its door was one labelled Preacher. You'll do, I thought.

  There was no answer when I knocked on the door. I was waiting in the alleyway when the Preacher came out. He was wearing his long black robe, with its white collar and cuffs. He said, in a voice that failed to carry conviction, "The peace be upon you."

  "And upon you, Your Worship."

  "And now, young man, what is the meaning of this? Are we to be allowed no privacy aboard our own ark?"

  "Captain Beynon's compliments, Your Worship. It's a red morning—and the blow'll hit us before we make the Narrows."

  "So? Then you may tell your commander that I will ask the Saint-in-Charge to offer prayers for intercession."

  "My commander told me to tell you to see that all is secured."

  "Indeed? We place our trust in a Higher Power."

  * I should have liked, very much, to tell him that if that was the way he felt about it we'd cut the Show Boat adrift and let it make its own way up river—but in these days you had to be very careful in your dealings with the Saints of the Salvation. As it was, I felt that it would be little short of a miracle if at least one of our pigeons wasn't sent flapping back to New Orleans carrying a strong letter of complaint to the Bishop regarding the unriverworthiness of Richmond Queen and the gross incompetence of her personnel.

  "As you please, Your Worship," I said, and turned to go.

  "The peace be upon you."

  "And on you."

  When I got back on deck the sky was darker, almost the color of old blood, and a swirling motion was apparent in the lower clouds of the overcast. From the south came the distant grumble of thunder. There were the beginnings of a swell, too, and the short brow between the Show Boat and the ship was working and complaining.

  Before going back up to the bridge I paused by the boilers for a word with Giles, the Engineer of the watch. He looked up from the steam gauge he was reading, said, "Looks like dirt."

  "It sure does, Gillie. I'll send the Bosun along right away to give your boys a hand with the storm boards."

  "They'll cut off what little breeze we have now," he complained.

  "That's just too bad. If your bunkers go . . ." and I gestured to the stack of logs ". . . it'll be more than just too bad."

  "All right, then. But you can't expect me to maintain steam with no draught."

  "You'll have all the draught you want soon enough."

  Back on the bridge, I found the Old Man sitting on his high stool in the pilot house. He said, "It'll not be long now. Did you warn the Singers?"

  "I warned the Preacher, sir. He . . . Well, he sort of gave me the impression that he was referring the matter to a Higher Authority."

  "He did, did he? It's a rather touchy business,

  Whitley. If these people were passengers aboard Richmond Queen they'd have to take my orders. But the legal relationship between a shipmaster and the personnel of a tow has never been clearly established. I can advise, but I can't order. Also, if the safety of my own ship is jeopardized, I can cut adrift." He smiled bleakly. "And if I cut adrift the Gospel Singers and the Bishop's daughter it'd be the finish of me on the river. What's that?"

  "Music, sir," I said.

  He got down off his stool, and together we walked to the starboard wing of the bridge, looked down to the upper deck of the Show Boat. The Singers had brought up a portable organ and now, clad in their spotless white robes, ranged with military precision, were ready to make their own peculiar preparations for the coming storm. A little to one side stood the stout Preacher, and with him was a tall
woman, her pale blonde hair arranged in the halo effect worn only by the female Saints.

  The tall blonde, the Saint-in-Charge, raised her arm in its flowing white sleeve. The woman at the organ who, until now, had been indulging in a sort of introductory tootling, produced recognizable melody from her instrument. And the singers gave tongue.

  "Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore! "Heed not the rolling billows, bend to the oar!"Safe within the lifeboat, sailor, cling to self no more; "Leave the poor old stranded wreck—and pull . .

  The screaming roar of escaping steam drowned the final words. The Preacher walked to the port side of the Show Boat's upper deck, bawled something up to the Old Man and myself. We could not hear him. The Singers stood around looking helpless. The Saint-incharge looked far from saintly.

  Throughout the day the weather deteriorated.

  With the rising northerly wind came rain—rain so heavy that I had to station men in the vicinity of the furnaces to keep wash ports clear, to sweep, even to bail. Visibility was a matter of yards only—but this, until we approached the Narrows, was no cause for worry.

  Relations between the Show Boat and Richmond Queen remained strained. The Preacher and the Saint-in-Charge came aboard, however, to hold a service in our saloon for the benefit of our passengers and such crew members who could attend. Six of our passengers were from Albany, and they complained to the Captain that the preaching and hymn singing were interfering with their poker game. The Old Man told them that they'd better tell their story to the Duke and let him fight it out with the Bishop at a diplomatic level.

  It was after the service was over that I was on the foredeck checking the lashings of our deck cargo when I was suddenly aware that somebody was watching me. I looked up, saw that it was the Bishop's daughter. My first impression was one of coolness, and I wondered how she managed it in her voluminous white robes. Her pale face, innocent of make-up, helped to convey the impression, as did her severely handsome features and her pale hair.

  She said—and her voice was like the drip of ice water from the face of the Mount Christopher Glacier — "You are the Mate, are you not?"

  "Yes, Your Holiness."

  "You were aboard our ark this morning, early."

  "I was. I hope that all has been secured."

  "It has been. After all, we have a saying— 'The Lord helps those who help themselves/ But . . ."

  "If you'll pardon me, Holiness, I have work to do."

  Her white teeth dented her pale lower lip. She said. "But there are matters that I would . . . discuss . . ."

  Abruptly I was acutely conscious of the fact that she was an attractive woman. But, as I had told her, I had work to do. I started bawling for the Bosun to come and put extra lashings on the deck cargo.

  With afternoon the sky was no longer red, had deepened to black—a black through which the lightning cascaded in an almost continuous torrent, from which rolled distant mutter and imminent roar of thunder. The rain had stopped, but the wind had risen, was still rising, was blowing, now and again, in sudden, vicious gusts that threatened to slew Richmond Queen and her tow broadside on to the mounting sea. Astern the gale was yet, sweeping in from the torrid North, from the Equator, so saturated with moisture that breathing was difficult. With the sea was a long, heavy swell, running up under our counter, at times lifting the stern wheel almost clear of the water, dipping our bows under. The engineers no longer complained about the draught-stopping storm boards.

  We passed a Phibian village, the loosely connected

  cluster of woven, buoyant huts riding the waves with an ease that we envied. We steered to pass them closely, blew our whistle in salutation. One oldster poked his white-crested head up out of his hut, looked at us incuriously, lifted a languid flipper in salutation, then vanished below.

  "They don't seem to want any help, sir," I said to the Old Man.

  "I didn't think they would—but I always like to keep on the right side of the little beasts. Besides—I rather like 'em. Did I ever tell you about old Skitch? He used to be chief of one of the really big villages, could talk quite good English. Day like this. In Maid of Teddington, it was, Cap'n Munro, Master, myself Mate, and old Skitch aboard as deadhead passenger up river. I'd just finished getting everything lashed, Then I caught the old so-and-so helping himself to the new one inch line that I'd just passed round some bales of cotton. He was going to throw it to a passing village. I gave him hell about it.

  Skymen drown too easy,' he says. Thibian no down easy. Give'm plenty 'ope, Phibian see skymen no drown.' "

  "Ay, they'd sell their souls for a few fathoms of one inch rope," I said. "But they must've saved quite a good few of our people from drowning. Wonder what they really think of us ..."

  "About the same as we think of them—that it's just as well to keep on the right side of us."

  I fought my way to the starboard wing of the bridge—clutching the hand rail the whole distance to keep my footing against the almost solid wind, looked down to the mooring lines that held the Show Boat to our side. Because of their different lengths, the period of pitching of the two vessels was not synchronizing, and the rubbing strakes were taking severe punishment.

  Back in the pilot house I said, "I'd better double up on the towlines before dark, sir, and get some fenders over. Will it be all right if I get the Second or Third up to hold the fort while I'm doing it?"

  "I'll look after her. Go ahead."

  By the time that we had made all secure the last of the dusk was gone, and the only light came from the fitful phosphorescence of the breaking waves and the glaring, flickering lightning.

  Surprisingly, I was able to sleep that night after I had made my rounds. The motion of the ship was not unpleasant. It was the change of motion that awakened me.

  After three matches from the box on my bunkside shelf had failed to ignite I gave up the attempt, dressed hastily without benefit of my oil lamp, climbed up to the bridge. The wind had dropped— but there was still a heavy sea running, a confused, pyramidal sea. The sky above us was clear—and for the second time in my life I saw the stars. I found time to look at them, to wonder which of those tiny, glimmering lights was Earth, the legendary world from which our first ancestors had escaped generations ago.

  From the Show Boat came the sound of voices, of singing.

  "When the trumpet of the Lord did sound, and nations were no more,

  'And the morning dawned eternal, bright and fair, 'And the saved of Earth were gathered over on the

  across the stars wheeling and dipping dropping down through the darkness. A heavy body flopped on to the bridge between Beynon and myself. There was

  the odor of rotten eggs. I could hear other bodies falling to the deck all around us, cries and screams from the choir on the Show Boat's upper deck.

  "The center of the storm," said the Old Man. "Balloon birds—other things too, probably. Better get your crowd out, Mr. Whitley, to clear the brutes off the deck. If there's any work to be done when the blow starts again they'll be getting underfoot."

  "If they didn't stink we might like 'em better," I said.

  By the time that I got the Bosun out and the crowd organized the first cloud veils were blowing over the

  to the southward! The wind came again, fitful gusts a*t first, with a spatter of cold rain and hailstones. Spray, with heavier water ever more frequently, was already sweeping the foredeck. But the swell was still con-

  comfortable lurch and roll, loosening with every uneasy motion the lashings of the cargo.

  By the time that all was once again secure, the slack taken up on the last Spanish windlass, the ship was plunging into a head sea that gave me cause to worry about the strength of the for'ard storm boards— behind the protection of which the engineers and their firemen were maintaining steam—and the moorings of the Show Boat. It was while the Carpenter was shoring up the storm boards that the Show Boat began to break adrift.

  The moorings held—if anything, they held too we
ll. It was the forward post on the Show Boat that went, snapped cleanly in two, still dangling from our side on the heavy lines that I had put out at the beginning of the blow. The bows of the unpowered hulk swung out and away to starboard, the flat stern came round to lie flush along our side—while the last moorings held. I ran into the engine space, caught hold of the engineer of the watch.

  "Go astern!" I yelled. "Full astern!"

  "Orders should come from the bridge," he said.

  I ran to the speaking tube, whistled up. The Old Man answered.

  "The Show Boat's broken adrift," I told him. "For'ard moorings gone, after ones'll go any minute. She'll be into our wheel!"

  The signal bell clanged, the great connecting rods faltered in their stroke, slowed and faltered, stopped. Before the engines had been put into reverse I was back on deck, looking at the Show Boat's after mooring post wobbling like a loose tooth. Another line had to be put out forward, and that fast.

  "A heaving line!" I yelled.

  Somebody thrust the end of one into my hand. I jumped from our deck to the Show Boat's stern, scrambled forward to the blunt bows of the thing. She was shipping heavy water along the port side but, in spite of being knocked over twice, I managed to keep hold of that tail of line. I noticed vaguely that there were other people around me, assumed that they were some of my own men who had followed me. "Here!" I yelled. "Grab hold—don't lose it!" I hoped that by this time the Bosun or one of my officers would have a mooring line out and bent on to the heaving line. A vivid flash of lightning showed a cluster of dark figures at Richmond Queen's bow. It showed, too, a puff of steam from the ship's whistle, but the noise of the blast was drowned by the peal of thunder.

  "Put your backs into it!" I bawled, adding some choice adjectives. "Get that end aboard as fast as cripes'll let you! Jump to it!"

  The next flash of lightning showed me the new mooring line snaking out and across from Richmond Queen's bow. It was not long before the end of it was up on to the Show Boat's foredeck, the eye thrown over the starboard mooring post. I stood away from the others, waited for another flash of lightning and made the hand signal to heave away. Richmond Queen's powerful windlass would make short work of getting her alongside again, especially with the ship going astern.